Regional Geography Flashcards

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1
Q

Are Africans in the ‘coup-belt’ prisoners of geography?

A
  • since 1950 there have been more than 48 coup attempts globally. Almost 1/2 have been in Africa - over 100 succeeded.
  • 45 of 54 African nations have experienced at least one coup attempt.
  • 17 of the 18 coups worldwide since 2017 have been in Africa, most in west Africa and the Sahel.
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2
Q

What is the coup-belt?

A
  • modern geopolitical concept which emerged in the 2020s to describe the region of West Africa, Central Africa and the Sahel.
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3
Q

Geographical factors as to why is the Sahel prone to coups?

A
  • the region is semi-arid
  • poor coup growth
  • suffers water and food shortages
  • landlocked
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4
Q

Coup - Gabon:

A
  • lack of basic resources, abundance of rich resources, i.e., cobalt.
    climate - arid (lack of precipitation)
  • historical factors: e.g., borders (French ex-colony, borders based on territory not culture).
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5
Q

What is environmental determinism?

A
  • Evolutionary theory influences a pseudo-scientific geographical racism, poisitng a hierarchy of human types according to climate, with white Europeans at the top.
  • Geographers mapped civilisation/barbarism onto physical grogragues in a ‘moral economy of climate’
  • Africa and Australia’s ‘inauspicious climates explained their savagery
  • And the (supposed) lack of civilisation in the tropics was thought to be due to the climate.
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6
Q

Environmental determinists:

A
  • Friedrich Ratzel
  • Ellen Churchill Semple
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7
Q

Friedrich Ratzel:

A
  • In 1901, Ratzel coins the concept lebensraum (living space)
  • Healthy or more vigoirs states will grow beyond their borders
  • This idea was later adopted by Nazi ideology to justify aggression and expansion.
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8
Q

Ellen Churchill Semple:

A
  • Human temperament, culture, religion, values, economy, etc all derived from the environment.
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9
Q

Responses to environmental determinism:

A
  • Environmental determinism cannot explain variation and migration, humans modify and shape environments as much as they are shaped by them.
  • ‘The geographical experiment in holding nature and culture together in causal evolutionary terms was collapsing as an academic enterprise’.
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10
Q

Responses to environmental determinism - landscape and region:

A

Carl O Sauer
Paul Vidal de la Blache

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11
Q

Carl O Sauer:

A
  • (1889-1975)
  • In 1925, Sauer publishes the Morphology of Landscape
  • Geography as the study of ‘culture areas’
  • Culture as an ‘imprint’ or ‘stamp’ upon the earth’s surface to produce a landscape
  • Culture + nature = landscape
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12
Q

Paul Vidal de la Blache:

A
  • (1845-1918):
  • The ‘region’ is a unique expression of the interaction between humanity and the physical environment
  • In particular places, pays, the natural realm provided the milieux in which ‘genres de vie’ (ways of life) were shaped
  • Customs are etched onto the land
  • Habits of life reflect nature, but they also transform it.
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13
Q

The rise of regional geography?

A
  • ‘regional geography’ is the dominant way that Geography was taught and researched in Europe and N. America from the 1930s to the 1950s.
  • Instead of specialising in a branch of geography (geomorphology, political geography, cultural geography, etc.) lecturers would specialise in a particular region of the world.
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14
Q

Hartshorne:

A
  • The Nature of Geography (1939)
  • Geography as chorology: ‘the ultimate purpose of Geography is the study of areal differentiation of the world’
  • Tried to define Geography as the identification and classification of distinct ‘regions’
  • Yet, region is a “fuzzy” concept: it refers to both sub-national (Midlands, East Anglia) and supra-national (Scandinavia, Middle East) entities
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15
Q

Mackinder:

A
  • First Reader in Geography at University of Oxford (1887); co-founder of LSE (1895); MP (1910-1922)
  • Evolutionary / Darwinist view of geography as a human struggle for space and resources
  • In 1899, part of the first European expedition to climb Mount Kenya
  • In 1904, publishes the Geographical Pivot of History
  • Places geography explicitly at the service of imperial power and control
  • Geography as a kind of military/strategic knowledge = Geopolitics
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16
Q

Haushofer:

A
  • In Germany, geopolitical emphasis focuses on the theory of lebensraum
  • This builds on Ratzel’s earlier (Darwinian) work on how ‘vigorous’ peoples would seek to expand their territories
  • Haushofer synthesizes this with Mackinder’s Heartland or pivot theory (1904) to develop ideas about lebensraum that are used by the Nazis.
17
Q

Conclusion:

A
  • late 19th century and early 20th century - Darwin’s ideas on evolution and natural selection exerted a strong influence on geography and other disciplines (e.g. anthropology).
  • Darwinism would shape the way that geography played out for much of the next century.
  • In the early years of the 20th century, for example, under the influence of evolutionary theory, some geographers advocated Environmental Determinism (e.g. Ratzel, Semple).
  • Most reacted against this, and instead studies of human-environment interactions and the development of particular cultural landscapes and regions came to dominate (e.g. Vidal, Sauer).
  • Regional geography dominated education and research in the discipline from the 1930s to 1950s.
  • At the same time, a strong variant of Darwinian thinking influenced the new field of geopolitics.